The Helpers Report. Tracking social mobilization of cause-oriented Facebook users in the post-2016 landscape

Transcription

1 Tracking social mobilization of cause-oriented Facebook users in the post-2016 landscape Itsa.community Nov. 16, 2016

2 Page 1/13 Initial Summary (36 hours post election) During the hours immediately following the 2016 US Presidential Election results, there was a boom in interest among a variety of Facebook pages dedicated to civil rights, women's equality, and news networks. This interest translated directly to new page likes that represented increases in the hundreds and thousands of percentage points versus the same period the previous week. This was not an isolated occurrence, as examination of dozens of randomly chosen organizations confirmed the trend. Among the sample of more than 60 pages analyzed by this report, in the first 36 hours following the election, Planned Parenthood and ACLU Nationwide experienced the largest bumps in their respective categories at a whopping +2,533% and +1,150% representing 18,407 and 62,707 new page likes. Top Results by New Likes Top Results by % Change Page Category New Likes %^ Category Page 1 Donald Trump Politician 2,069,686 2,533 Women's Rights Planned Parenthood 1 2 Hillary Clinton Politician 1,392,962 1,364 Women's Rights National Organization for Women 2 3 Barack Obama Politician 1,318,430 1,150 Civil Rights ACLU Nationwide 3 4 CNN News Network 628,831 1,025 Politician Donald Trump 4 5 Fox News News Network 275, Pundit Van Jones 5 6 NBC News News Network 273, News Network NBC News 6 7 Van Jones Pundit 149, Politician Barack Obama 7 8 ABC News News Network 108, Women's Rights National Partnership for Women & Families 8 9 Late Night with Seth Meyers Comedy 76, Civil Rights Anti Defamation League 9 10 Dan Rather Journalist 76, Journalist Dan Rather 10 What does this mean? New page likes are tallied each week as a way to measure trends in the growth of a page. For example, if a page had 10 new likes last week and 10 new likes this week, the page has net a 0% increase in new likes week-over-week. If however, in the second week, 100 new were recorded, that change represents a 1,000% increase in the number of new likes per week. Increases of this magnitude are common for very small pages, but they become increasingly more rare as the size of any page grows. There are a number of factors that can affect this metric from week to week. For instance, if a page runs a paid marketing campaign to drive traffic, you would expect the number to increase. In the case of this report, however, the boost in traffic can be correlated directly to the announcement of the election results as the trend line spikes dramatically not during the election, but early the following day. This suggests that a common reaction to the election results was an immediate and significant mobilization of Facebook users behind progressive, direct-action oriented causes. Over the same 36 hour time period, there was an identifiable trend in the data-set which showed large increases in new likes for cause-related Facebook Pages from Planned Parenthood and the ACLU to the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council.

3 Page 2/13 Surprisingly, the trend was not as pronounced in environmental or general charity pages. While these categories did see increases, they were nowhere near as pronounced as those for Women's Rights and Civil Rights groups. Follow up Summary (1 week post election) The trends identified after 36 hours increased in magnitude over the course of the first postelection week. The biggest gains went to the ACLU Nationwide page. The organization closed the week with more than a quarter million new page likes (226,161), representing a 3,991% increase over the same period the previous week. By comparison, Donald Trump was elected president and saw a 147% increase in the number of new followers on his Facebook page. In terms of total numbers, however, the presidentelect took the top spot with over 2.1 million new likes. The staying-power of this trend did not translate to News Networks or Nightly Comedy shows, as 7 of them posted negative numbers for the week. NBC News, for example saw a -67% change in new page likes vs the same period the previous week. In the end, within the first week of the election, the random sample of Women's Rights, Civil Rights, and Environmental Justice groups in this study collected over 460,000 new page likes. Top Results by % Change Page Category New Likes %^ 1 National Partnership for Women & Families Women's Rights 12, % 2 Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights 114, % 3 ACLU Nationwide Civil Rights 226, % 4 Mike Rowe Pundit 146, % 5 Planned Parenthood Women's Rights 35, % 6 Anti Defamation League Civil Rights 4, % 7 National Organization for Women Women's Rights 7, % 8 Joe Biden Politician 39, % 9 Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Justice 6, % 10 National Women's Law Center Women's Rights 1, % 11 Human Rights Campaign Civil Rights 24, % 12 Wounded Warrior Project Charity/Volunteer Network 9, % 13 Van Jones Pundit 208, % 14 Feminist Majority Foundation Women's Rights % 15 Bernie Sanders Politician 118, % 16 Justin Trudeau Foreign Leader 78, % 17 Dan Rather Journalist 93, % 18 Angela Merkel Foreign Leader 30, % 19 The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Comedy 122, % 20 Martin O'Malley Politician 1, % 21 Ted Cruz Politician 10, % 22 Donald Trump Politician 2,163, % 23 Enrique Pena Nieto Foreign Leader 20, % 24 The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Comedy 35, % 25 Megyn Kelly Journalist 9, %

4 Page 3/13 Report Introduction Generally speaking, in the time immediately following impactful life events, people seek comfort, guidance, or context in order to process their new reality. Different people find this from different channels some turn to religious beliefs, others to the news media, and some even turn to comedians. This report was compiled to highlight the role that social media played in this process following the results of the 2016 Presidential Election. It was compiled by Michael Grosse, an ex-reporter and a long-time media and technology professional. The idea arose from his background as a journalist and computer programmer with an interest in researching how technology affects storytelling and civic engagement. Personal Background The late children's television show host Fred Rogers is often quoted after national tragedies to provide words of hope to those experiencing fear or despair: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers so many caring people in this world. - Fred Rogers 1 Like many people trying to process the results of the 2016 election, this author turned to social media for that relief. I was interested in simply connecting with the causes that I understood to now be in the path of destructive campaign promises: freedom of the press, social and environmental justice, women's equality to name just a few. So, I 'liked' a few social justice organization pages on Facebook. I quickly noticed that my friends were also starting to follow some of the same pages. This gave me the idea to check the public analytics reports of these pages. The results were so pronounced that I felt compelled to research the trends on a larger scale. My findings are documented in this report, which I have named. Named so to invoke the idea that helpers are always to be found in times of distress. The lesser-known extended quote from Fred Rogers explains why......there will always be helpers just on the sidelines. That's why I think that if news programs could make a conscious effort of showing rescue teams, of showing who...anybody who is coming into a place where there's a tragedy. To be sure that they include that. Because if you look for the helpers, you'll know that there's hope. - Fred Rogers 2 ( LGHtc_D328)

5 Page 4/13 Purpose The purpose of this report is to document the immediate impact of the 2016 Presidential Election on a cross section of Facebook pages organized in the following categories: 1) Charity/Volunteering 2) Civil Rights Organizations 3) Nightly Comedy Shows 4) Environmental Justice 5) Foreign Leaders 6) Journalists 7) News Networks 8) Politicians 9) Pundits 10) Women's Rights Limitations & Bias This report is not held to the high standards of peer-reviewed analysis. It is a surface evaluation of the social trends identified within a subjective data-set immediately following the 2016 presidential election. The obvious elephant in the room is my bias of having begun the analysis looking at progressive causes that I was interested in. As my research continued, I started to identify and track other viewpoints within the data-set, but that was more of as a means of providing insights within context. Questions The questions I sought to answer are as follow: 1) How were people responding to the election results online? 2) Which categories of pages were experiencing the greatest and least impacts? 3) Were these impacts isolated to single organizations within any category, or spread across similar organizations? Methods The methodology used for this report was to identify as many active and recognizable Facebook pages for organizations within each of the categories mentioned above and to record their public analytics reports on Thursday November 10 th, This time window would allow for capturing the initial wave of interactions that could be attributed to the election results themselves rather than to other driving factors. Once the data-set was compiled, I performed a number of surface ranking sorts and filters to identify general trends within the data-set at large as well as within subsets as defined in the results section. At first glance, I was finding that the News Networks and Politicians categories were dominating the top spots in my findings. But I noticed something interesting on the analysis that measured the increase in page likes this week versus the new page likes from the previous week. The categories were shifting their rankings dramatically and the groupings

6 Page 5/13 were getting tighter for certain categories. The initial evaluation did not attempt to account for the fact that some categories were overrepresented, so a second subset was evaluated that only contained the top 3 pages from each category (ranked by % increase of the number of likes). I found that within that restricted data-set, the findings were even more evident. In order to track these changes over time, I reexamined the same sample set 1 week following the election. Evaluated Metrics Talking about: Represents the number of times a page was mentioned during the week Likes: Represents the lifetime total number of page likes for a page New Likes: Represents new likes during the week Percent Change: Represents the difference between the number of new likes this week vs the number of new likes within the previous week Sample My sample was around 60 Facebook pages identified by name recognition and simple Google searches for well-known organizations within each category. 3 Instrumentation Results were compiled by feeding the data-set into a spreadsheet and filtering and sorting by various methods. Results Please see the following pages.

7 Results after 36 hours Page 6/13 Top Results by New Likes Top Results by % Change Page Category New Likes %^ Category Page 1 Donald Trump Politician 2,069,686 2,533 Women's Rights Planned Parenthood 1 2 Hillary Clinton Politician 1,392,962 1,364 Women's Rights National Organization for Women 2 3 Barack Obama Politician 1,318,430 1,150 Civil Rights ACLU Nationwide 3 4 CNN News Network 628,831 1,025 Politician Donald Trump 4 5 Fox News News Network 275, Pundit Van Jones 5 6 NBC News News Network 273, News Network NBC News 6 7 Van Jones Pundit 149, Politician Barack Obama 7 8 ABC News News Network 108, Women's Rights National Partnership for Women & Families 8 9 Late Night with Seth Meyers Comedy 76, Civil Rights Anti Defamation League 9 10 Dan Rather Journalist 76, Journalist Dan Rather Bernie Sanders Politician 75, News Network CNN ACLU Nationwide Civil Rights 62, Pundit Mike Rowe Breitbart News Network 60, Foreign Leader Theresa May The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Comedy 53, Politician Hillary Clinton Sean Hannity Pundit 51, News Network Fox News Justin Trudeau Foreign Leader 51, Foreign Leader Angela Merkel Alex Jones Pundit 50, Politician Bernie Sanders God (comedian) Comedy 44, Civil Rights Human Rights Campaign CBS News News Network 39, Journalist Anderson Cooper Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Comedy 38, Politician Joe Biden Mike Rowe Pundit 33, News Network CBS News The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Comedy 26, Religion Unitarian Universalist Association Angela Merkel Foreign Leader 24, Politician Martin O'Malley Enrique Pena Nieto Foreign Leader 21, Comedy The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Rush Limbaugh Pundit 18, Comedy The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Planned Parenthood Women's Rights 18, Foreign Leader Enrique Pena Nieto Anderson Cooper Journalist 16, Women's Rights Feminist Majority Foundation Human Rights Campaign Civil Rights 15, Women's Rights National Women's Law Center Conan O'Brien Comedy 14, Religion American Humanist Association Catholic Church Religion 13, Politician Ted Cruz Bill O'Reilly Pundit 12, Foreign Leader Justin Trudeau PBS News Network 11, Journalist Megyn Kelly Joe Biden Politician 11, Comedy Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights 11, Charity/Volunteer Network Wounded Warrior Project The Late Late Show with James Corden Comedy 11, Comedy God (comedian) Theresa May Foreign Leader 9, Pundit Bill O'Reilly Ted Cruz Politician 9, Politician Marco Rubio Megyn Kelly Journalist 7, Politician John Kasich The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Comedy 7, Charity/Volunteer Network Feeding America Marco Rubio Politician 7, Pundit Sean Hannity Mitt Romney Politician 6, News Network ABC News GreenPeace International Environmental Justice 6, Comedy Late Night with Seth Meyers American Humanist Association Religion 5, Voice of Reason Kurt Vonnegut Wounded Warrior Project Charity/Volunteer Network 4, Civil Rights Southern Poverty Law Center National Organization for Women Women's Rights 3, Pundit Alex Jones St Jude Children's Research Hospital Charity/Volunteer Network 2, Environmental Justice Environmental Defense Fund National Wildlife Federation Environmental Justice 1, News Network Breitbart Red Cross Charity/Volunteer Network 1, Politician Mitt Romney John Kasich Politician 1, Pundit Rush Limbaugh Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Justice 1, Comedy The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon 50 Key takeaways after 36 hours: 1) Sorting changes in page likes as a percentage difference from the previous week revealed a trend that disproportionately favored organizations in the Women's Rights and Civil Rights categories. From appearing only once in the top 25 sorted by number of likes to taking the top 3 positions and a total of 5 out of the top 10 when sorted by percentages. 2) Doing so also showed the News Networks, Politicians, and Nightly Comedy Shows categories to perform worse week-over-week...dropping from 8 of the top 9 spots sorted by numbers to 3 of the top 10 sorted by percentages.

8 Results after 1 week Page 7/13 Top Results by New Likes Top Results by % Change Page Category New Likes %^ Category Page 1 Donald Trump Politician 2,163,365 30,063% Women's Rights National Partnership for Women & Families 1 2 Barack Obama Politician 1,152,589 4,362% Civil Rights Southern Poverty Law Center 2 3 Hillary Clinton Politician 988,372 3,991% Civil Rights ACLU Nationwide 3 4 CNN News Network 388,061 3,064% Pundit Mike Rowe 4 5 ACLU Nationwide Civil Rights 226,161 2,919% Women's Rights Planned Parenthood 5 6 Van Jones Pundit 208,409 2,438% Civil Rights Anti Defamation League 6 7 Fox News News Network 188,699 2,352% Women's Rights National Organization for Women 7 8 Mike Rowe Pundit 146,659 1,268% Politician Joe Biden 8 9 The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Comedy 122, % Environmental Justice Environmental Defense Fund 9 10 Bernie Sanders Politician 118, % Women's Rights National Women's Law Center Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights 114, % Civil Rights Human Rights Campaign Dan Rather Journalist 93, % Charity/Volunteer Network Wounded Warrior Project ABC News News Network 88, % Pundit Van Jones Breitbart News Network 87, % Women's Rights Feminist Majority Foundation NBC News News Network 80, % Politician Bernie Sanders Justin Trudeau Foreign Leader 78, % Foreign Leader Justin Trudeau The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Comedy 55, % Journalist Dan Rather Sean Hannity Pundit 52, % Foreign Leader Angela Merkel Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Comedy 44, % Comedy The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Joe Biden Politician 39, % Politician Martin O'Malley God (comedian) Comedy 38, % Politician Ted Cruz The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Comedy 35, % Politician Donald Trump Planned Parenthood Women's Rights 35, % Foreign Leader Enrique Pena Nieto Alex Jones Pundit 31, % Comedy The Late Show with Stephen Colbert CBS News News Network 31, % Journalist Megyn Kelly Angela Merkel Foreign Leader 30, % Pundit Bill O'Reilly Late Night with Seth Meyers Comedy 29, % News Network Breitbart Human Rights Campaign Civil Rights 24, % Comedy Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Rush Limbaugh Pundit 23,445 83% Religion American Humanist Association Enrique Pena Nieto Foreign Leader 20,952 82% Politician John Kasich Bill O'Reilly Pundit 15,581 76% Politician Barack Obama Catholic Church Religion 14,699 68% Pundit Rush Limbaugh PBS News Network 13,086 65% Politician Marco Rubio National Partnership for Women & Families Women's Rights 12,367 60% Politician Mitt Romney Conan O'Brien Comedy 11,028 50% Religion Unitarian Universalist Association Ted Cruz Politician 10,114 47% Pundit Sean Hannity Wounded Warrior Project Charity/Volunteer Network 9,770 39% Environmental Justice National Wildlife Federation Megyn Kelly Journalist 9,422 36% Voice of Reason Kurt Vonnegut National Organization for Women Women's Rights 7,872 29% Charity/Volunteer Network Goodwill The Late Late Show with James Corden Comedy 7,854 28% Comedy God (comedian) Mitt Romney Politician 7,655 26% Journalist Anderson Cooper GreenPeace International Environmental Justice 7,322 23% Environmental Justice GreenPeace International Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Justice 6,855 23% News Network PBS American Humanist Association Religion 6,827 18% Religion Catholic Church Marco Rubio Politician 5,873 17% Politician Hillary Clinton Theresa May Foreign Leader 5,381 13% Charity/Volunteer Network United Way Anti Defamation League Civil Rights 4,695 13% Religion Scientology Anderson Cooper Journalist 3,027 12% Charity/Volunteer Network Feeding America St Jude Children's Research Hospital Charity/Volunteer Network 2,806 11% Charity/Volunteer Network Red Cross National Wildlife Federation Environmental Justice 2,069 11% Comedy The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon 50 Key takeaways after 1 week: 1) Women's, Civil, and Environmental Rights extended their dominance within rankings sorted by new likes as a percentage change From taking 5 out of the top 10 spots after 36 hours to taking 8 out of the top 10 after a week. 2) Interest spiked within the environmental justice category, suggesting a delayed recognition between the election results and its environmental consequences. 3) Results seem to suggest that people are not as interested in general charities as they are interested in more specific proactive direct-action organizations.

9 Page 8/13 Results after 36 hours Subset: Adjusted to only include top 3 pages (by % increase) in each category This subset represents 151 million total page likes and 6.5 million new likes. Top 10 results sorted by PERCENT CHANGE over previous week Page Category %^ 1 Planned Parenthood Women's Rights 2,533 2 National Organization for Women Women's Rights 1,364 3 ACLU Nationwide Civil Rights 1,150 4 Donald Trump Politician 1,025 5 Van Jones Pundit NBC News News Network Barack Obama Politician National Partnership for Women & Families Women's Rights Anti Defamation League Civil Rights Dan Rather Journalist 485 Bottom 10 results sorted by PERCENT CHANGE over previous week Page Category %^ 30 GreenPeace International Environmental Justice 2 29 National Wildlife Federation Environmental Justice St Jude Children's Research Hospital Charity/Volunteer Network Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Justice Feeding America Charity/Volunteer Network Bill O'Reilly Pundit Wounded Warrior Project Charity/Volunteer Network Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Comedy Megyn Kelly Journalist Enrique Pena Nieto Foreign Leader The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Comedy 205 Key takeaways: 3) From the previous subset, politicians and news networks dominate the sheer numbers categories in terms of total likes and total new likes. 4) When results are viewed as percentage changes over the previous week, Women's Rights and Civil Rights pages leap to the top of the charts. 5) 100% of the pages categorized as Environmental Justice or Charity/Volunteer Network fell in the bottom 10. As did 2 out of the 3 Nightly Comedy Shows.

10 Results after 1 week Page 9/ Subset: Adjusted to only include top 3 pages (by % increase) in each category This subset represents 1.3 million new likes. Top 10 results sorted by PERCENT CHANGE over previous week Page Category %^ 1 National Partnership for Women & Families Women's Rights 30,063% 2 Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights 4,362% 3 ACLU Nationwide Civil Rights 3,991% 4 Mike Rowe Pundit 3,064% 5 Planned Parenthood Women's Rights 2,919% 6 Anti Defamation League Civil Rights 2,438% 7 National Organization for Women Women's Rights 2,352% 8 Joe Biden Politician 1,268% 9 Environmental Defense Fund Environmental Justice 744% 10 Wounded Warrior Project Charity/Volunteer Network 359% Bottom 10 results sorted by PERCENT CHANGE over previous week Page Category %^ 30 Megyn Kelly Journalist 139% 29 Bill O'Reilly Pundit 118% 28 Breitbart News Network 104% 27 Full Frontal with Samantha Bee Comedy 100% 26 National Wildlife Federation Environmental Justice 39% 25 Goodwill Charity/Volunteer Network 29% 24 Anderson Cooper Journalist 26% 23 GreenPeace International Environmental Justice 23% 22 PBS News Network 23% 21 United Way Charity/Volunteer Network 13% 20 ABC News News Network 1% Key takeaways: 1) Progressive causes dominated the top 10 for a full week after the election. 2) The bottom three spots were taken by conservative leaning pages. 3) General charities continued to lag behind more specific organizations. 4) News networks and nightly comedy shows did not fare as well over the week.

11 Page 10/ Subset: Top 25 pages ranked by total page likes Within this subset representing 206 million likes the top categories represented were as follows: 1) News Networks - 7 2) Politicians - 5 3) Nightly Comedy Shows - 4 4) Foreign Leaders 3 5) Pundits 3 6) Civil Rights Organizations 1 7) Charity/Volunteering 1 8) Environmental Justice - 1 Notable Observation: Top 5 ranked by % increase All Politicians and News Network Subset: Top 25 pages ranked by new page likes Within this subset representing 180 million likes the top categories represented were as follows: 1) News Networks 6 [ 6 after 1 week ] +0 2) Nightly Comedy Shows 5 [ 5 after 1 week ] +0 3) Pundits 5 [ 4 after 1 week ] -1 4) Politicians 4 [ 5 after 1 week ] +1 5) Foreign Leaders - 3 [ 1 after 1 week ] -2 6) Civil Rights Organizations - 1 [ 2 after 1 week ] +1 7) Journalists - 1 [ 1 after 1 week ] +0 8) Women's Rights - 0 [ 1 after 1 week ] +1 Notable Observation (36 hrs): Top single result ranked by % increase Civil Rights Notable Observation (1 week): Ranked by numbers, politicians take top 3.Civil Rights jumps to 5 th and 11th. Women's Rights makes the list. News Networks drop. Subset: Top 25 pages ranked by talking about total Within this subset representing 180 million likes the top categories represented were as follows: 1) News Networks - 6 2) Nightly Comedy Shows - 5 3) Pundits - 5 4) Politicians 4 5) Foreign Leaders 3 6) Civil Rights Organizations 1 7) Journalists 1 Notable Observation: Top single result ranked by % increase Civil Rights

12 Page 11/13 Subset: Top 25 pages ranked by percent increase in page likes vs prev week Within this subset representing 154 million likes the top categories represented were as follows: 1) Politicians 6 [ 5 after 1 week ] -1 2) News Networks - 4 [ 0 after 1 week ] -4 3) Women's Rights - 3 [ 5 after 1 week ] +2 4) Civil Rights Organizations 3 [ 4 after 1 week ] +1 5) Foreign Leaders 3 [ 3 after 1 week ] +0 6) Nightly Comedy Shows - 2 [ 2 after 1 week ] +0 7) Journalists - 2 [ 2 after 1 week ] +0 8) Pundits 2 [ 2 after 1 week ] +0 9) Charity/Volunteer Network - 0 [ 1 after 1 week ] +1 10) Environmental Justice - 0 [ 1 after 1 week ] +1 Notable Observation (36hrs): Top 3 results ranked by % increase Women's Rights & Civil Rights Notable Observation (1 week): News dropped out entirely. Charity and Environmental Justice make an appearance. Women's rights interest increases.